Waymo to bring all-electric robotaxis to Singapore with public rides planned for 2028

Waymo picks Singapore for its next expansion

Waymo has announced plans to bring its all-electric autonomous ride-hailing service to Singapore, one of the company's most significant moves beyond the United States to date. The announcement, published on Waymo's own site and widely shared on Hacker News, ties the expansion to Singapore's sustainability agenda and its ambition to be a leader in smart mobility.

According to Waymo, the service is intended to support the Singapore Green Plan 2030, the country's national sustainability roadmap, by providing shared, zero-emission rides in vehicles sourced with renewable energy where possible. The company also frames the service as a complement to Singapore's existing transit network rather than a competitor, saying it will work with government agencies, transport authorities and local communities on multi-modal connections with public transport.

A phased rollout starting with manual driving

Waymo intends to begin initial driving operations next year, following the staged approach it has used in other cities:

• Vehicles will first be driven manually, around the clock, to map and collect validation data across all regions of Singapore.
• That data will be used to seek Land Transport Authority approval for Waymo's autonomous driving system in 2027.
• Autonomous driving will then begin with trained local specialists behind the wheel.
• Fully autonomous operations follow, with the service opening to riders in 2028.

The company says it will work closely with the Ministry of Transport, the Land Transport Authority and other local authorities to secure the necessary approvals, and that testing will run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so the technology can handle all road conditions. Data gathered during testing will be processed under Singapore's Personal Data Protection Act and Waymo's privacy policy.

Jaguar I-PACE fleet and the fifth-generation Driver

The initial fleet will consist of all-electric Jaguar I-PACE vehicles equipped with the fifth-generation Waymo Driver, with additional vehicle platforms planned as the fleet scales. The system combines cameras, radar and lidar with onboard compute to maintain a 360-degree view of the vehicle's surroundings at distances of up to 300 meters.

For streets busy with pedestrians and cyclists, Waymo says its software predicts the behaviour of vulnerable road users and manoeuvres to give them space, while visual and audio cues communicate the vehicle's intentions to people outside the car. A Safe Exit feature is designed to stop riders from opening doors into approaching cyclists when arriving at a destination.

The track record Waymo is leaning on

All of the performance figures come from Waymo itself. The company reports more than 500,000 trips per week, operations in more than 15 major US cities including publicly available services in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix, and over 300 million kilometres driven on public roads. It also claims 94% fewer injury-causing crashes compared with human drivers covering the same distances in the cities where it operates in the US.

Waymo adds that it is already gathering autonomous driving experience in other large global cities, naming London and Tokyo, and expects that experience to translate to Singapore, while committing to validate it rigorously at each step. Notably, its publicly available services today are all in the United States, which would make Singapore a milestone in the company's international push if the timeline holds.

Why it matters

Singapore is a demanding market for any autonomous vehicle operator: dense urban streets, a government with explicitly high AV regulatory standards, and a national Land Transport Master Plan 2040 that treats smart mobility as policy. Waymo presents these as reasons to enter, arguing that significant real-world experience in US cities has prepared it to meet Singapore's requirements.

The timeline itself is also telling. Even for the best-funded robotaxi operator, the path from announcement to first paying rider in a new country spans roughly two years: manual mapping in 2027, regulatory approval sought that same year, and commercial service only in 2028. For observers of autonomous driving, Singapore will be a test of whether Waymo's US safety record and operating model can be transplanted into a fundamentally different regulatory and traffic environment, and a data point on how quickly robotaxis can genuinely globalise.